Engineering Manager, AI Applications

We believe that the way people interact with their finances will drastically improve in the next few years. We’re dedicated to empowering this transformation by building the tools and experiences that thousands of developers use to create their own products. Plaid powers the tools millions of people rely on to live a healthier financial life. We work with thousands of companies like Venmo, SoFi, several of the Fortune 500, and many of the largest banks to make it easy for people to connect their financial accounts to the apps and services they want to use. Plaid’s network covers 12,000 financial institutions across the US, Canada, UK and Europe. Founded in 2013, the company is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York, Seattle, Washington D.C., Raleigh, London, and Amsterdam.

AI and intelligent systems are driving the fifth paradigm shift, following previous technological revolutions like mainframes, personal computers, the internet, and mobile devices.

We believe, in the foreseeable future, AI will revolutionize the FinTech industry - from how consumers understand and manage their finances, to how developers build applications and how all companies operate. The fintech industry landscape will undergo a fundamental reshape.

Plaid in the FinTech AI Ecosystem

Plaid is uniquely positioned to become the financial data and insights backbone for AI applications and platforms in this evolving ecosystem.

We believe consumers should be able to understand and manage their financial life through conversational AI interfaces using natural language. We believe consumers should have peace of mind with a trustworthy consent and authorization manager when agents shop for them. We believe identity verification and financial fraud prevention in AI-powered products should feel seamless and embedded for the end users. The list goes on.

The most important AI companies, major fintechs, and customer agent platforms are actively trying to integrate Plaid into AI-powered products and solutions they build.

The AI Applications Team

You will have the opportunity to lead this newly formed team, which builds the backbone for agentic financial workflows with a product full-stack and first principles mindset, and grow with the team in our quest to accelerate Plaid’s transformation into an AI-first company.

Responsibilities:

• You will lead a team of 6 engineers, ranging from junior to staff, developing them through clear goal setting, coaching, and feedback

• You will define and drive the long-term strategy and manage execution on the team, in close partnership with technical and product leaders across Plaid

• Have a front row seat to all the latest industry developments. Over time, with the skills and experience you develop and hone on this team, you can become an influential voice in defining where AI <> Fintech will be heading longer term.

You will work with your team to:

Lead projects that enable and scale our business with our largest AI customers and partners, starting with personal finance use cases and expanding into many others; examples include:

• Architect the trust layer for the future of agentic commerce that will become the industry standard, including consent management, governance, and security

• Build the product full-stack backbone for agentic financial workflows, from workflow design to the end-user experience

• Redefine how Plaid’s consumer link experience embeds into conversational interfaces in the most seamless way

• Develop and evolve the preferred integration pattern for Plaid with AI providers - from API adaptations to building the official Plaid MCP Servers, and beyond

Qualifications:

Must-haves:

• 8+ years of industry experience, including time as a Staff-level engineer before moving into management

• 1+ years of engineering management experience

• Strong product-mindedness: understands customer and user needs, runs rapid experiments - be your own technical PM

• Experience shipping full-stack products end to end, with workflow design and iteration on real user feedback

• A track record of building and growing high-performing engineering teams

• Ability to balance exploring possibilities with judging feasibility, for 0 to 1 work

• Based in San Francisco, in the office 3 days a week

• Curiosity about AI applications in fintech

Nice to have:

• Hands-on experience shipping LLM-powered products, such as agents, RAG or evals

• Experience training or serving ML models in production

• Comfort with privacy- and PII-sensitive environments

• Experience with AI-native or developer-platform customers and partners

Our mission at Plaid is to unlock financial freedom for everyone. To support that mission, we seek to build a diverse team of driven individuals who care deeply about making the financial ecosystem more equitable. We recognize that strong qualifications can come from both prior work experiences and lived experiences. We encourage you to apply to a role even if your experience doesn't fully match the job description. We are always looking for team members that will bring something unique to Plaid!

Plaid is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and values diversity at our company. We do not discriminate based on race, color, national origin, ethnicity, religion or religious belief, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, military or veteran status, disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws. Plaid is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our recruiting process. If you need any assistance with your application or interviews due to a disability, please let us know at accommodations@plaid.com.

Please review our Candidate Privacy Notice here.

Additional compensation in the form(s) of equity and/or commission are dependent on the position offered. Plaid provides a comprehensive benefit plan, including medical, dental, vision, and 401(k). Pay is based on factors such as (but not limited to) scope and responsibilities of the position, candidate's work experience and skillset, and location. Pay and benefits are subject to change at any time, consistent with the terms of any applicable compensation or benefit plans.